Track is my field: Mark Cullen's international track and field website featuring storytelling, commentary, and predictions and event analyses for the Olympics and World Championships. I am writing from the 2018 European Championships in Berlin this week. I'll be reporting from the Diamond League finals in Zurich and Brussels as well. I'm active on Facebook and Twitter: @trackerati.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Dubbed the “Godmother of Green Lake” by Seattle columnist
Emmett Watson, Laurel James opened her legendary running store, Super Jock ‘n
Jill, the day after Thanksgiving in 1975.

James was the single mother of five boys when she decided
that the real estate and insurance licenses she held did not represent her
future. “It wasn’t working at all,” said James. “This was the era of ‘Will the
last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights.’ ”

When her two oldest sons, Brent and Chet, went to college,
her son Bryce came home one day in 1974 and asked if he could invite his new coach
over for dinner.

Pat Tyson stayed for six years.

Tyson was the inspiration for James’ involvement with
running, and he introduced her to his famous Oregon teammate and college roommate
Steve Prefontaine. “Meeting Pre was like putting frosting on the cake,” she
said. “I thought he was great and my Mom thought he was great, too.”

At 40, James had $10,000 and a dream. Stand-alone running
stores were a novelty then; they were few and, quite literally, far between. But
the running bug had bitten James.

“One reason I started Super Jock ‘n Jill was none of the sporting
goods stores had a selection of good running shoes. All I had was a pair of
Keds, and even track spikes were dated then.”

James opened “SJ+J” in a converted gas station near
Seattle’s Green Lake where, ironically, Road Runner Sports now operates. This
location, however, was her second choice. All along she had her eye on the
Masonic Temple building where the store operates to this day, and after a
two-and-a-half year wait, she occupied her dream location.

The fledgling business was a family enterprise, and all five
sons helped clean years of dust out of the first facility. Chet is now the
owner of Super Jock ‘n Jill and Brent - one of Nike’s early employees – has had
a very successful career in shoe design. Allen was a ’92 and ’96 race walking
Olympian. Says Chet, “My Mom gave birth to this; I adopted it.”

The store and the James home hosted prominent guests: Grete
Waitz, Fred Lebow, Olympic and World champion Ernesto Canto and the Mexican
race walking team, and none other than Arthur Lydiard.

The name of the store grew out of a trade show James
attended in Phoenix. A friend had suggested The Jock Shop in honor of her
energetic brood, but James flew home knowing that wasn’t quite right. “I came
off the plane with Super Jock and four days later added Jill.”

This name generated threats of a lawsuit from the Jockey
underwear company. Said James to their lawyer, “What makes you think you can
take on a woman with five kids? What kind of press are you going to get out of
that?”

Geography played a key role in the success of her
enterprise. Green Lake became the go-to destination for Seattle’s running
community as the 1970s running boom took off. James vowed that she would not start
in a mall. “I don’t want looky-loos,” she recalled saying to herself. “I want
clientele.”

Quick to recognize the opportunity, James organized timed
runs around the lake, and an enterprising Seattle podiatrist, Bill Warnekros,
sponsored Thursday evening clinics which drew grateful gimpy runners to the
store for free advice.

Key to James’ success was her resourcefulness. “I remember
one day a truck pulled up and they offloaded something like 577 pairs of Nikes
– with a bill for $30,000. I didn’t have $30,000 and after three days, I called
Nike’s credit manager, who really didn’t want me to have my own store. But
their local rep, Al Miller, had faith that I’d make it.”

It was James’ irrefutable logic that carried the day. “I
told the credit manager that he didn’t want these back, and that I didn’t want
to pay a 15% surcharge if I did return them. I promised I’d send him a check
every Friday.” In three months the bill was paid – and the shoes were sold. “It
was 1979,” said James, “and it was one of the times we were hanging by a
thread.”

Super Jock ‘n Jill was the first sponsor of the Seattle
Marathon, and sponsorship made for some strange bedfellows in the early days.
One underwriter of the Red Brick Road Half-Marathon was the lamb industry. “The
night before the race we had a whole gang of people in my house making lamb
sandwiches that we gave to the vendors the next day!”

It was James who conceived of the Olympia, WA, bid for the
1984 US Women’s Olympic Trials Marathon, and a point of pride for James is the
trailblazing support she and her store gave women distance runners and running.

Olympia was up against heavyweights: New York (Fred Lebow
and the New York Road Runners Club), Buffalo (which had already been awarded
the US men’s marathon trials), Los Angeles (which had ‘84’s biggest meet of
all), and Kansas City. Olympia pulled out all the stops, including having US
Senator Slade Gorton narrate the presentation in person.

Olympia’s win is considered one of the most colossal upsets
in bid history. No surprise, given the determined driving force behind it.

James, who in August turned twice the age of the store,
views Super Jock ‘n Jill as a neighborhood store – with a very expansive
neighborhood.

The store’s success has always been about the personal relationships
it generates. In its early days it was “a great hangout place,” said James, a
place where lifelong friendships were formed. “There was no other place to go
to find this sense of a running community.”

For 40 years, a store forged from family has given Seattle’s
running community its home.

* * *

Editor's notes:

I shopped at Super Jock 'n' Jill the day it opened in 1975. The previous summer Pat Tyson had introduced me to Laurel James in Eugene. She told me of her dream and I promised I'd support it. Laurel and I remain friends to this day. In fact, a year ago, when Super Jock 'n' Jill opened their Redmond store a year ago, Chet made sure I was the very first customer.

A version of this story appeared in the November/December issue of Northwest Runner. Special thanks to publisher Frank Field for his gracious introduction in the magazine.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

In better news in this dismal but possibly redemptive week for international track and field... a personal note.

My five event reports from the Beijing World Championships - men's and women's hammer throw, men's and women's discus, and men's javelin - are in the World Championships edition of Track and Field News.
My 'coverish' story on Laurel James, founder 40 years ago of Seattle's Super Jock 'n' Jill, is in the November/December issue of Northwest Runner.

I'm not able to post links here as both publications are subscription-based and password protected. However, by agreement with the publisher, I'll be able to post my Laurel James story the day after Thanksgiving, the 40th anniversary of the opening of the store - and yes, 40 years to the day since I shopped there first. I was the first customer at their Redmond store when it opened last fall.